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As always, the truth is far less exciting than the lore.

Twinkies were created in 1930 as ladyfinger-shaped spongecakes enrobing a banana filling at the Hostess bakery in Schiller Park, Illinois. (Hostess is now owned by Kansas City-based Interstate Bakeries Corp.) The product’s name was inspired by a billboard in St. Louis advertising Twinkle Toe Shoes. When the world’s banana trade ground to a halt during World War II (this wasn’t the first time war disrupted the banana trade — the popular ditty “Yes, We Have No Bananas” came out of World War I because of similar circumstances), Hostess substituted a vanilla cream filling not dissimilar to cake

frosting.

Twinkies have a shelf life of twenty-five days, not seven years, and certainly not fifty years. Even so, twenty-five days is an unusually long time for a baked product to stay fresh. The secret to Twinkies’ longevity is their lack of dairy ingredients: because dairy products are not part of the formula, Twinkies spoil much more slowly than other bakery items.

After the baking process of the sponge cake portion is completed, cream filling is injected into each Twinkie through three holes in its top (brown) side; the product is then flipped before packaging, turning its bottom into its top. Hostess estimates it uses eight million pounds of sugar, seven million pounds of flour, and one million eggs to produce the 500 million Twinkies baked every year.

Twinkies gained notoriety in American jurisprudence in 1979 when the media widely misreported the claim that Dan White, on trial for shooting San Francisco mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk, asserted that his consumption of junk foods such as Twinkies “had left him with diminished capacity for reason.”

According to Hostess, it takes forty-five seconds to explode a Twinkie in a microwave.

Barbara “and far less than forty-five for your mother to pitch a fit over it” Mikkelson

Mann, Jennifer. “A Birthday for a Cake.”

The Kansas City Star. 1 April 2000 (p. C1).

Pierce, Charles. “In Defense of Twinkies.”

The Boston Globe. 16 March 2003 (Magazine, p. 20).

The Houston Chronicle. “Long Life of Twinkies Is Legendary.”

15 May 1996 (Food, p. 7).

Expiration dates can be hard to locate on a product and even more challenging to decipher. Currently, the United States does not have a regulated or standard system for coding expiration dates on food, except for those on baby food and infant formula. All other dates and codes are added voluntarily by manufacturers. Whether you’re a consumer who is interested in determining when the product that you want to buy is going to expire, or a grocer who is taking initiative to track expiration dates, learning how to read different types of expiration date codes is an important skill.

There are two types of expiration date codes on products. The first type is open dating, which uses a standard time or calendar date. These dates are typically followed by labels, such as “use-by”, “sell-by”, or “pull-by”. Use-by dates are intended for consumers and indicate when a product will start to deteriorate, while the latter two are for grocery stores to know how long to keep products displayed on the shelves. Typically, products are good for seven to ten days past their sell-by or pull-by dates. However, this is only a guideline. For instance, even the posted sell-by or best-if-used-by label found on many dry goods, such as canned food items, may not reflect the most accurate shelf life of these products. Canned goods may in fact last months beyond the expiration code if stored and handled effectively.

Closed coding is another form of listing expiration dates on products. These codes are typically a short string of numbers and sometimes letters stamped at the top or bottom of products. Unlike open dating, closed coding is used not by consumers, but by manufacturers to assist with inventory tracking.

International Standard Date And Time Notation - Orwell

Given that there is not one unified translation system for closed coding, learning to read these labels can often prove to be tricky.

In coding, if letters are used to signify months, “A” will indicate January all the way to December ending with “L”. Next to these letters will typically be numbers indicating the day and the year. However, sometimes the numbered year will come before the letter. On the other hand, if numbers are used to signify the month, 1-9 will represent January to September, while the last three months will be assigned the first letter of their name, respectively (O for October, N for November, and D for December).

Codes may also be comprised exclusively of numbers typically presented in the standard order of MMDDYY or YYMMDD (e.g., September 12, 2016 would be 091216 or 160912). Some codes also abide by the Julian calendar, which assigns a number to each day of the year from 1 to 365. In this case, September 12 would be 255.

Hostess Expiration Codes

Again, there is no definitive translation system for private expiration codes, as each manufacturer uses their own unique system. Still, learning these various forms of coding could eventually assist in reading these seemingly complex food expiration date codes with a bit more ease.

Understanding How To Read Food Expiration Date Codes

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